Tag Archives: Wearable

I’ll be honest… I usually carry around three (yes, three) different mobile charging apparatuses when I know I’m going to be out with my gadgets all day: one of these, one of these, and this. Is it overkill? Probably. But being a ::cough:: professional journalist, running out of batteries is simply not an option. Even I, however, would not wear a universal wrist charger. It’s just too dorky, and I’m really more of a geek. Or I like to think so, anyway.

If you just look at the numbers, this universal wrist charger is actually pretty decent: it has a 1500 mAh battery, weighs 82 grams, and will charge anything that only needs 5 volts (same as a USB port). Since most of your gadgets are probably hand-held, it’s a convenient way to be using something and charging it at the same time. Problem is, there’s really no getting around the utter dorkiness of this thing. If it also had a little LCD on it or something, you could at least pretend that it was some kind of ridiculously fancy watch, but as it is, it just has 4 little lights to indicate what level of charge it has. Wait a sec… Random lights? Weird design? I’ve got it! Just tell everyone that you’re sporting the latest and greatest from Tokyo Flash, and wear the universal wrist charger in anonymous pride. Problem solved!

Wallets are for storing your cash and credit cards and USB keys and stuff, and such a simple and straightforward use implies a simple and straightforward design. Apparently, some of you have expressed enough of a desire to also use your wallet for other things, like, I don’t know, killing people, that TMT Wallets felt that they could introduce a “tactical wallet” that would be commercially viable.

The TMT Tactical wallet assumes that if you buy it, you are professional super spy who is likely to be captured by the enemy on one of your top secret missions. Therefore, it has been specifically designed to assist you in the following scenarios: enduring water torture (o-rings make it waterproof), keeping your secrets secret (it has two hidden compartments and is impervious to RFID), beating your guards senseless (it’s made of 6061-T6 aluminum), breaking out of prison (it has a carbide glass breaking point), removing shards of broken glass from your flesh (it has tweezers), finding your way back to the good guys (it has a compass), and then enjoying a nice meal when you get home (it’s got a toothpick). Oh, and if course it has a built-in pen that you can use to write a screenplay about your adventures. When you consider all of these advantages, who cares that it’s gigantic and heavy and uncomfortable and $125? As a professional super spy, you need one.

Professional gamers know: optimizing control inputs means maximizing damage, and maximizing damage is the most important thing that there is in life. The Peregrine gaming glove contains an array of touch sensors on the thumb, fingers, and palm, and lets you control your game with simple touches instead of using the keyboard. The point? It’s faster, more intuitive, and more convenient, and pro gamers say (or at least this one told us) that it makes a huge difference:

The glove is attached to your computer by a break-away cable, and as far as your computer is concerned, the glove is just a keyboard. So, you basically just have to bind motions to keys or combinations of keys using the included software, which makes the glove potentially useful for anything you want, not just gaming. It only comes in left handed at the moment, and is thankfully washable.

Obviously, the Peregrine isn’t going to work that well if you’re playing a lot of FPS games, in which case those left-handed WASD keys are in use just about all the time. But for games where precise and continuous movement is less important than being able to execute different tasks quickly, the Peregrine glove could give you the edge you need to be awesome. Or to just not totally suck.

You can preorder the Peregrine for $130 on their website, and you should get it sometime early this year.

Part of the reason that I like playing games is that my character can get beat up in a million different ways and die over and over and I get to just sit here and drink Mountain Dew and eat Cheetos and push buttons. But I guess some people want a more immersive experience, and want to be able to feel more than an ego sting when their character takes a shotgun blast in the chest. We’re familiar with one gadget that tries to make the gaming experience a bit more realistic, the 3rd Space Vest, and the Immerz KOR-fx, uh, chestphones aim to do the same kind of thing, except with sound instead of air pressure.

The way the KOR-fx works is through the magical mystery of “acousto-haptic technology.” Really, all it seems to be is some bass amplifiers that rest on your chest and pump low frequency sound directly into your body cavity, letting you feel the bass effects without having to turn your speakers way up, since headphones don’t produce that same visceral low-end effect. It means you can game quietly without feeling like it’s quiet. Sounds like a great accessory, right? Well, it would be, if it wasn’t supposed to cost $250 or more. I mean, for that amount of money I’d rather just turn my speakers up and make my neighbors suffer… If they want to buy me a set of these, that’s up to them.

If I had a shirt like this, I’m sure I’d be happy as this strange looking boy is. Totally Absurd Inventions insists that this is an actual US patent, although I haven’t been able to find it on the USPTO website, so I can’t do much besides relate what they say about it:

The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.

The inventor suggests you can clean the Gerbil Shirt by attaching it to a faucet (remove pets first please), and you should avoid collisions and falls that could cause pet panic.

You want to scar your little one for life, then let us suggest this bright yellow UFO Cap Umbrella from Korea. It’s not quite a raincoat. And it’s really not an umbrella. You might say it’s a little bit of both, but that’s being generous. The product page pitch will have you believe it’s convenient, folds into a small, easily carried bundle and hey, leaves you with your hands free to do whatever. But don’t fall for any of this. What you’d really be purchasing is a yellow, PVC kick-me sign for your kid. He’ll remember this in therapy, trust us.

Incidentally, if you’re cruel and actually want to go ahead with a purchase, well we can’t quite figure out how much it is as no price is listed on the website. It’s not like we’re going to make it easier for you to torture your child anyway.

See this bracelet? It’s telling you not to do drugs. Well, not you, since you’re mature enough and intelligent enough to make those kinds of decisions for yourself. But the youth of America are a bunch of clueless and impressionable… You know… Youth… and they only really pay attention to social messages they can turn into bling.

The Sound Advice Project wants you to talk to your kids about drugs, and to make it easier on you, they’re offering you a bracelet to bribe them with. The bracelets are custom made, and the arrangement of beads represents a sound wave that you record. The Project wants you to say something positive and about drugs. Er, yeah. But you don’t have to, as far as I can tell, and you can use the six seconds to make up a physical, wearable incarnation of whatever phrase you’d like.

At only $18, it’s not a bad little geeky gift idea.

Update: A bit of research shows you can probably buy this item on this website.

Keeping your eyes open all day can be such a painful chore, and you deserve some relief. The Eye Vibrato is a mask that provides heat, vibration, and four different intensities of pressurized air to relax your eyeballs. Plus, the mask blocks out ambient light, meaning that you don’t have to spend the time and effort actually closing your eyes at all. It’s $64 on Amazon Japan.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.